River Contamination for garments industry and its effect:

Industry and garment use more water than all other industries combined, primarily for cooling
systems but also for controlling pollution from smokestacks and disposing of toxic coal ash. As a
result, coal-fired power plants are also some of the biggest sources of water pollution as well as
river contamination in the country, responsible for dumping millions of tons of toxic chemicals
into waterways, raising water temperatures, and killing billions of fish.

Environmental Protection Agency to issue two sets of stronger standards that will limit the
amount of toxic pollutants discharged from power plants and reduce their water use and save
firming, which will then better protect aquatic habitat and curb river contamination.

In 2017, Industry and garments generated about 76 million tons of coal ash—enough to fill 17
stadiums the size of the Superdome in New Orleans. Coal ash contains unsafe levels of mercury,
arsenic, lead, chromium, and other toxic metals—and, making matters worse, it's often mixed
with water and stored in unprotected and unlined sludge ponds, which sometimes leak or spill.
New EPA standards could reduce or eliminate discharges of pollutants contained in coal ash and
other types of waste from thermoelectric power plants. This would then also dramatically
decrease the amount of water that power plants use for controlling their toxic emissions and
managing coal ash. That is continuously harming our agriculture system.

Many older power plants still use an outdated system known as “once-through cooling," which
pulls in enormous volumes of water, less productivity in firming, kills fish, and disrupts the
environment by returning water back where it came from at much higher temperatures. Strong
EPA standards for cooling systems would encourage the industry to move away from this
environmentally destructive system and toward modern technologies, such as closed-cycle
cooling, which use less water, save firming and harm far fewer fish.